On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 09:02:48AM -0400, jkinz@kinz.org wrote:

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 07:33:45AM -0400, Eric McClatchie wrote:

...

I am having emails ending up not delivered whenever a certain domain URL is in the email. When I check surbl.org lists, the domain is NOT blacklisted. What other lists should I be looking at?

I also notice when subscribing to this list, the approval email went to spam on gmail!

I'm not certain, but I think the list they are misusing is from the service at http://www.us.sorbs.net/ .

Eric - I see that others on this email list have identified "email body content" blacklists like the ones from http://www.uribl.com/index.shtml.

Please do follow up their information.

In order to tell exactly whats happening to your emails, you need to post the actual message your are getting from the blocking party, or at least post the message and who you sent it to. Without that info the problem can't be diagnosed.

I knew there was a good reason I wasn't certain about which list it was.. The list GD(GoDaddy) is miss-using is the "PBL", published by SpamHaus.

Spamhaus is one of oldest spam fighting organizations. [God bless 'em! :) ]

The PBL is a list of IP's that [paraphrased] Spamhaus thinks you should not allow to deliver emails directly to your email system. eg - "do not accept direct incoming mail delivery connections from these locations".

Spamhaus has no problems with people on those IPs having domains on those IP's, as long as they route their email transmissions through a legitimate email relay. NB - NOT an Open relay.

Spamhaus has no problem with people having those domain names or IP addresses inside the body of the emails either. GD is the only group on the web known to have that policy. Having a domain hosted on a dynamic IP is not an issue - Having an domain known to have been sending out spam IS an issue, and some of those are on dynamic IP's, but the two sets are not the same, there is just some overlap between them.

Here is a much better explanation of the GD problem: http://techtalk.dreamhosters.com/wordpress/2009/07/17/special-report-whos-yo...

The Key paragraph from that post to remember is :

"GoDaddy has been alerted to this problem, admits that it is incorrectly configured, and ... are not going to do anything about it."

GD's attitude and actions here indicate that one of these 3 scenarios s taken place inside GD:

1. scenario: GD is attempting to increase revenue by stopping email for anyone using domains on dynamic IP's hoping to convert victims into customers paying for domain/web hosting services.

Analysis: possible but unless they are actively pitching those folks to convert this one is a low probability. {haven't seen any indications they are pitching the victims).

2. scenario: GD is reducing costs by filtering all email crossing their boundaries with one unified filter, thereby simplifying their work on spam filtering.

Analysis: Not adding the PBL to a spam filtering tool is usually a matter of editing a few lines of text or a few mouse clicks, and GD already denies SMTP connections to IP's on the PBL. So GD is actually increasing their spam filtering costs a great deal <the PBL is BIG> by doing this. The only way I see this happening is that either GD does not have anyone who actually understands how to configure their email filters or the admin who had all the passwords left without handing them over, or they have somehow gotten themselves locked out of their own system. probability: Low.

#3 scenario: Irrational self-lock in; someone's ego is tied to the idea, someone's emotions are motivating them, (Anger?, Revenge?), groupthink gone toxic, Posturing "we are the best spam preventers".

Analysis: Sad, but higher probability than the other two.

I suppose other possible causes exist, but these seem to be the most likely.

J.